DEBUNKING "THE STORY OF THE BUCK ACT"

By Roger M. Wilcox

Last edited 8-December-2013

No one likes paying taxes of any kind, and Federal income taxes are
liked perhaps the least of all. I know of no one, apart from the
U.S. Treasury Department1, that has any
love for the IRS. People who would hardly utter a grunt at having
to pay a sales tax, a real estate tax, a gasoline excise tax, or even a
state income tax, will bellow and holler in consternation when it comes
time to file a Federal income tax return. For most people, this
is because the Federal income tax is the largest single tax they pay
that is visible to them. And not just visible as a withholding
amount on their paychecks; it stares back up at them from a line on
form 10402 at the end of the year as a
gargantuan lump sum. For others, it's because they feel the
Federal government is inefficient and that the economy would be better
off if the money were left in the private sector. For still
others, its because they have had, or know someone who has had, or have
read about someone who has had, a bad experience with the IRS in which
the agency may have exceeded its authority in order to nab revenue and/or
look threatening.

But there's another, smaller group that goes beyond this. They
don't just feel that their expensive Federal government is inefficient,
they feel that it is actively evil. That it has departed so radically
from what the Constitution says it's supposed to be, that it is their patriotic
and moral duty to fully reject living within its jurisdiction. And
if this happens to save them tens of thousands of dollars per year in taxes,
I guess that's just one of the "prices" they'll have to "pay". They
call themselves "patriots", and their cause is to restore what they believe
is their guaranteed "sovereignty" under the Constitution.

Like all good conspiracy theories, the theory that the U.S. isn't operating
under the Constitution needs to have an "origin story". How did this
"Sovereign Republic", the Greatest Nation on Earth, where Freedom Rings and
Truth Goes Marching On, Glory Glory Hallelujah, lose its wonderful nigh-Utopian
status? What evil snake infiltrated our sweet-and-innocent Primordial
Government and tempted our Adams and Eves with the Fruit of their own downfall?

Some say it was Lincoln's declaration of Martial Law when the southern states
tried to secede. Since he was assassinated before he got to formally
un-declare Martial Law (if he even planned to), we've been in the
grips of a military dictatorship ever since. This theory is most popular
in the former Confederate states, for obvious reasons. Others say it was
in 1845 when Congress unilateraly extended the jurisdiction of Maritime
or Admiralty Law (the laws governing the high seas, coastal waters, and
navigable rivers) all the way inland to cover the entire United States.
Still others claim it happened when Congress granted FDR broad emergency
powers to deal with the Great Depression, and point to the way Roosevelt
outlawed private ownership of gold as evidence of a sinister objective.

And yet others say that it happened, or at least that the nails were
driven into the coffin of the "old" United States, by an obscure piece
of Federal legislation called the Buck Act.

Federal lands and Exclusive U.S. Jurisdiction

You see, a state may voluntarily sell some of the land lying within its
physical boundaries to the U.S. Federal government. It says so in the
Constitution. Right there, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 17. See
it? (What do you mean, you don't have a copy of the Constitution?
It's only the Supreme Law of the Land, you know. Oh, all right, if
you're too lazy to have your own copy handy, go ahead and look it up at
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html or
at any other site on the Web that has it. This webpage will still be here
when you get back.)

You noticed (didn't you?) that according to Article-I-section-8-clause-17
of the U.S. Constitution, if your state legislature decides to sell land
to the Federal government, and the Federal government buys it, Congress
gets to have exclusive legislation over it. State laws don't apply
within such Federal land. The Federal government usually buys small plots
of land in this way to build military bases, cemeteries, or other kinds
of things that wouldn't fit under normal zoning ordinances.

Unfortunately for the state the land was just purchased from, the state's
new lack of jurisdiction over the land means that it can no longer collect
taxes for anything that happens on that land. All those hot dog stands
and clothing stores on the military base are immune from sales taxes. All
those paychecks being handed out to employees that work on the land are
likewise untouched by the state's income tax. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in
economics to see that any state making such a real estate sale would be
getting a raw deal — unless it set its price really high. The Federal
government, on the other hand, couldn't care less if state income taxes
are applied to its employee's salaries; but it does care if it has
to pay a large price to buy land from the states.

Enter the Buck Act. Named either after the
Congressman who introduced the bill or some other obscure thing, it was passed
by Congress on October 9, 1940 as "54 Stat. 1059". (A transcript of the
Senate Committee on Finance's report, in which the Committee argued that the
bill should be signed into law, can be read in full at
http://www.geocities.com/b_rookard/buck_act_report.html.) On July 30,
1947, the Buck Act was "re-enacted by codification" (61 Stat. 641) and became
sections 105-110 of Title 4 in the United States
Code3. The Act permits state governments to
collect all income and sales taxes that they normally do, even if the
transactions being taxed take place on Federal land within their borders.
To streamline their verbiage, the code sections coin the fictitious term
"Federal Area" to describe lands or premises owned by any branch of the U.S.
government.

Sounds innocent enough, right? I mean, allowing states to tax
Federal employees hardly sounds like a power play by the Federal
government to deprive U.S. citizens of their Constitutional rights, does
it? Well, if it sounds harmless to you, that just goes to prove what a
dupe you are of the Evil Federal Government Conspiracy. A good conspiracy
theorist knows that the real purpose of such an innocently-worded Act is
to turn you into the property of the Federal Government the instant you put
your signature on any Federal form.

What?!

If that was your reaction, you must be one of those 2 or 3 people left in North
America that hasn't read "The Story of the Buck
Act", by Richard McDonald and edited by Mitch
Modeleski4 (reproduced here without permission, and
with line numbers added). This article appears on several "Patriot"
websites in exactly the same form. It is, to my knowledge, the
only article available for public reading presenting the "Buck Act =
deprived sovereignty" argument; or at least, the only article that backs up
this assertion by citing actual court cases.

If you haven't read it yet, you should, before going any further. This
whole long-winded article of mine is about"The Story of the Buck Act".

The gist of the "Story of the Buck Act" article
is this: (1) The Social Security Act established ten districts which cover the
entire continental U.S.; (2) The Buck Act established that "Federal Areas"
apply to any territory within a state where the Federal Government has
jurisdiction, including those Social Security districts; and (3) Since the Buck
Act says that "State" includes5 the District of
Columbia, from whence the Social Security Administration operates, everybody
who participates in the Social Security program is within a "Federal Area" and
thus subject to exclusive, non-Constitutionally-protected, Federal
jurisdiction.

However, under scrutiny, the arguments made by this article fall apart.
The court cases it cites support a few of its incidental, preliminary arguments
— the lemmas necessary for its main theorem, so to speak — but not
one of those cases supports its primary thesis. Finally, the Buck Act
itself provides the most damning evidence against this little conspiracy
theory.

Of course, I'll have to be meticulous if I want to make this personal adventure
in debunking a success. Conspiracy theorists will not be deterred by a
few flaws in their pet arguments; only a solid refutation of each and every
single piece of alleged evidence they present can begin to plant the seeds of
doubt in them. And since we're dealing here with conspiracy theorists who
may feel that it is their patriotic duty to act on the theories presented in
"The Story of the Buck Act", I'll have to be doubly meticulous so as to avoid
the inevitable accusations of "distorting the facts".

Social Insecurity

I've reproduced the entire text of the Buck Act, as enacted in Title 4,
Sections 105-110 of the U.S. Code, here.
I've also reproduced the Public Salary Tax Act of 1939, which comprises
section 111 immediately following the Buck Act, because the McDonald/Modeleski
article references it. This text will come in handy when dissecting the
crucial points made by their article.

The entire "Story of the Buck Act" article is reproduced
here. I've numbered each line, so that
references to specific places in this document can be made easily. These
line numbers will be useful for discussing it with your sovereignty-minded
friends, too, because the line numbers are the same for nearly all
copies of this article — only two websites I've found that carry "The
Story of the Buck Act" have ever applied any word wrapping to it.

Now, let's look at the arguments the article makes.

In lines 9-12, "The Story of the Buck Act" states:

In order forthe Federal Government to tax a Citizen of
one of the severalstates, they had to create some sort of contractual nexus.
Thiscontractual nexus is the "Social Security Number".

Right from the get-go, we have a very interesting assumption: that a Citizen
cannot be taxed by the Federal government unless he or she voluntarily
argees to be. Unfortunately, that's not what the Constitution says.
Article I, section 8, clause 1 of the Constitution states:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties,
Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence
and general Welfare of the United States;

This is a pretty broad taxing power. The only limitations on the
Federal government's power to impose taxes are in Article I, section 8,
clause 1 farther down:

but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout
the United States;

And in Article I, section 2, clause 3:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within this Union, according to their
respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number
of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years,
and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

And in Article I, section 9, clauses 3 and 4:

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion
to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

Those are all the limitations on the Federal government's taxing
power. Direct taxes have to be apportioned, indirect taxes have to
be uniform, and state exports can't be taxed at all. But other than
that, there are no limits on what may be taxed; nor are there any
limits on how high those taxes may be. And as if this weren't
bad enough, the sixteenth amendment6 even eliminates
any apportion requirement that might otherwise apply to income taxes:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,
from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States,
and without regard to any census or enumeration.

There is nothing anywhere in the Constitution prohibiting the Federal
government from taxing an individual Citizen without that person's
consent. The Framers of the Constitution felt that having a Congress
elected by, and chosen from amongst, the citizens of the states themselves
would be sufficient to deter excessive taxation or other transgressions of
Federal power. (To a degree, this principle is still working; the U.S.
still has lower tax rates than most countries in Europe, for example.)
If Congress decides to tax the incomes of each citizen, and the president
doesn't veto this decision, then there's no need for any one of these citizens
to personally agree to it. No "contractual nexus" is necessary.

The next sentence (lines 11-12) of the article says:

Thiscontractual nexus is the "Social Security Number".

Social Security Numbers are a favorite target of the Sovereignty Movement.
Identification numbers of all sorts have traditionally been viewed with
suspicion. They bear some similarity to the Mark of the Beast mentioned
in the Book of Revelation. In the opening title sequence to the British
TV series The Prisoner, the hero cries, "I am not a number, I am
a free man!". Criminals in jail have their photographs taken while
holding up a serial number. During World War II, the Nazis tatooed
I.D. numbers onto prisoners' forearms in their death camps. This
does not mean, however, that all I.D. numbers are the creation of power-hungry
totalitarians, or that unique I.D.s can't be beneficial to the individual.

The full text of the Social Security Act of 1935 appears at
http://www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html. Despite claims to the
contrary, a worker's payments into Social Security are not and never have been
"voluntary"; Title VIII of the Act even calls such payments an "Income Tax on
Employees"7. It was one of the first, if not
the first, Payroll Tax to be instituted at the Federal level.
However, any mention of Social Security numbers is conspicuously absent
from the text of the Act. They were in fact invented by the Social
Security Board as a means of uniquely identifying each wage earner, since a
person's Social Security entitlements at retirement were based on a percentage
of his or her lifetime Social Security tax payments. Hard-working Bob
Smith in Los Angeles didn't want some lazy Bob Smith in Dallas getting credit
for his Social Security money. (A short description of how Social
Security Numbers evolved into I.D. numbers can be found in
this Straight Dope
article.) The Social Security Board put up posters in 1936
encouraging workers to register for Social Security Numbers at the post office,
which gave the impression that not participating in the Social Security program
would merely mean you'd lose your old-age benefits; but this Postal
Registration system was merely a way for the Board to get all these new people
registered before the end of the year. If you missed this registration
"window", you were still required to register for an SSN and use it to have
social security taxes withheld from your paycheck. And if there was any
doubt, in 1960 the Supreme Court affirmed, in Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603,
that the Social Security system is not contractual in nature. Social
Security Numbers are no more a "contractual nexus", in which you agree to give
up some or all of your rights in exchange for voluntarily participating in an
optional program, than bank account numbers are.

What is a "Federal Area"?

Now, the government knows it cannot tax
those state Citizenswho live and work outside the territorial jurisdiction of Article1, Section 8, Clause 17 (1:8:17) or Article 4, Section 3, Clause2 (4:3:2) in the U.S. Constitution.

This reiterates and expands upon the assertion it makes in lines 9-11;
namely, that unless you're under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal
government (i.e. you are a "citizen" or "resident" of D.C., a U.S. Territory,
or land ceded to the Federal government, and don't exist merely within
a state), you aren't under any Federal jurisdiction at all and can't
be taxed. Once again, the Constitution says otherwise. But
lines 26-29 go further, leaping to a curious conclusion about the Buck
Act:

In Section 110(e),this Act authorized any department of the federal government
tocreate a "Federal area" for imposition of the "Public Salary
TaxAct of 1939".

Well, let's just see about that. The full text of 4 USC 110(e) (the
referred-to section of the Buck Act) reads
as follows:

The term ''Federal area'' means any lands or premises held or acquired
by or for the use of the United States or any department, establishment,
or agency, of the United States; and any Federal area, or any part thereof,
which is located within the exterior boundaries of any State, shall be
deemed to be a Federal area located within such State.

A "Federal Area" means land or premises held by either the U.S.
itself or by any of its departments, establishments, or agencies. That
hardly constitutes blanket authority to create a Federal Area.
The only way a Federal department could "create" a Federal Area is for
it to buy or acquire the land covering that area; and if it wanted to create
one within the boundaries of a State, it would need the permission of that
State's legislature before it could buy the land (c.f. U.S. Constitution,
Article I, Section 8, Clause 17).

But it gets worse. At the top of the last section of the
Buck Act, 4 USC 110, is probably its most
crucial line. With this one line, the whole argument about a "Federal
Area" placing you under the direct jurisdiction of the Federal government
crumbles into dust. It reads, simply:

As used in sections 105-109 of this title -

As used in sections 105-109 of U.S. Code Title 4!! The definition
for "Federal Area" in section 110 — and, for that matter, its definitions
for "Person", "Sales or use tax", "Income tax", and "State" — only
apply to the other sections of the Buck Act!! They don't apply
to any other Federal codes or regulations!

So, if a Federal Area's scope is limited to sections 105 through 109 of the
same Title, what "terrible things" do sections 105-109 impose upon us,
the Once Proud Sovereign Citizens of These United States? Well, read them
for yourself here. They allow a State
(which according to 110(d) includes D.C. and U.S. Territories) to apply any of
its sales taxes or income taxes on a "Federal Area" located inside the
physical boundaries of that state. And that's all.

But is that all there is to this story? Is it possible that McDonald
and Modeleski have found some other, less obvious way to read the exact
wording of the Buck Act, a way which strips us of our Constitutional rights
without coming out and saying so? Lines 42-44 say:

There is no reasonable doubt
that the federal "State" isimposing an excise tax under the provisions of 4 U.S.C.S. Section105

Okay, section 110(d) says that a "State" includes U.S. Territories and
Possessions, and thus would include the District of Columbia, which is
the seat of U.S. government. Fine. So the Federal "State" is
imposing Excise taxes (on gasoline and liquor, for instance), and it's
imposing Income taxes. And sections 105-106 of the Buck Act permit
such a "State" to levy its taxes on any transactions happening on a "Federal
Area" (land or premises held by the U.S.) within its physical
borders. So the Buck Act allows the "State" of the District of
Columbia, which is all Federal land and is thus one great big "Federal Area",
to impose taxes on Federal Areas within the physical boundaries of the District
of Columbia!

In other words, to the Federal government, the Buck Act grants it the right to
tax Federal Areas — a power which it held even before the Act was passed.

But Robert and Mitch don't stop there. In lines 64-79, they assert that
because the Social Security Board created 10 Social Security Districts that
"covered all the several states like a clear plastic overlay" (lines
16-17), everybody living within any of those Social Security areas —
which would include every Patriotic Flag-Waving Sovereign State Citizen who
made the mistake of having a Social Security Number — was now considered
within a "Federal Area" for purposes of the Buck Act. The physical
boundaries of the District of Columbia were artificially stretched to cover
everyone that received some kind of a "benefit" from the Federal government
or who "participates" in a Federal program. Ignoring for the moment
that section 110(e) limits Federal Areas to lands or premises, and that
sections 105-109 (the only laws the term "Federal Area" applies to) don't
seem to give the Federal government any powers that it didn't already have,
lines 71-72 cite a court case to attempt to back up their assertion:

Springfield v.Kenny, 104 N.E. 2d 65 (1951 App.).

Now, Springfield v. Kenny isn't a Supreme Court case. It's an Ohio
appellate court case. And it's from all the way back in 1951, so
you can't just fire up some law school's web-based search engine and go
looking for Springfield v. Kenny in their database. I had to go all
the way to one of those publically-accessible law libraries to find Volume
104, page 65 of the North Eastern Reporter, second series, which is where
this case is documented. And it was a good thing I went to the extra
trouble, too.

The City of Springfield, Ohio levied an income tax on its residents.
Vernon E. Kenny, who was a Springfield resident, argued that he shouldn't have
to pay the city's income tax because he was living in a Federally-owned housing
project. In this court case, the appellate judges do quote section
106(a) of the Buck Act in their opinions, if only briefly. But they
also explicitly state that, since the land for the Federal housing
project was not purchased with the express permission of the Ohio legislature,
this land was not under exclusive Federal jurisdiction! This is
exactly the opposite of McDonald and Modeleski's claim. This case could
hardly be said to extend the meaning of "Federal Area" from just lands or
premises to everything the Federal Government has their grimy little paws in.

And even if it did, it still wouldn't be enough to make their argument
gel. For that, "Federal Areas", and the supposed lack of Constitutional
protections that go with them, would have to apply to laws outside the
Buck Act.

Turning people into corporations since 1868

In lines 86-90, they claim to have found this necessary final piece of
the jigsaw puzzle:

Therefore, all U.S. citizens [i.e.
citizens of the Districtof Columbia] residing in one of the states
of the Union, areclassified as property, as franchisees of the federal government,and as an "individual entity". See Wheeling Steel Corp.
v. Fox,298 U.S. 193, 80 L.Ed. 1143, 56 S.Ct. 773.

Now Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Fox, 298 U.S. 193, is a Supreme Court
case. This case I did manage to look up with a straightforward web-based
search. (You can look it up yourself at
www.findlaw.com by using its "298 U.S.
193" designation.) In this case, Wheeling Steel Corp. did most of its
business in West Virginia, although it was Incorporated in Delaware and
manufactured most of its stuff in other states. West Virginia tax
commissioner Fox levied a property tax on the corporation's Accounts Receivable
assets, but of course Wheeling Steel Corp. said they shouldn't have to pay it
because (A) they weren't a West Virginia corporation, (B) the plants that they
sold the stuff from were in other states, and (C) the West Virginia tax
statutes allegedly taxed intangible property in a way that discriminated
against corporations. The Supreme Court sided with Fox.

How does this allegedly make all U.S. citizens into franchisees of the
Federal government? That allegation centers on Wheeling Steel Corp.'s
reason (C) above. Wheeling argued that discrimination in favor of
natural persons, against corporations, was in violation of the Constitution's
14th Amendment8, which says that no State shall
"deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws". Courts consider a corporation to be a "legal person", in that
it can own property, sue and be sued, has a "life" separate from its owners,
etc.. The justices' opinions in Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Fox imply
that the "any person" mentioned in the 14th Amendment's equal protection
clause may also be a "legal person" such as a corporation. (The issue
isn't as well settled as that, though; c.f. Cecil Adams'
Straight Dope
article on corporate personhood.) So, a
paranoid person might argue, since a corporation is to be given equal
protection with a natural person, a natural person has to be given protection
equal with (and not greater than that given to) a corporation; and
since corporations are franchisees of the state in which they Incorporated,
that makes natural persons no better than franchisees themselves.
It's an almost reasonable argument, if a bit obscure, but one thing is
missing: Where in this case does it imply whom the citizens
are franchisees of?

And more importantly, what does this case have to do with the Buck Act?
Nothing. Ol' Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Fox was decided on May
18, 1936, more than four years before the Buck Act was even passed by Congress.

Why you should revoke everything

Lines 96-98 bring up another staple of the Sovereignty Movement:

Federal territorial law is evidenced by the Executive
Branch'syellow-fringed U.S. flag flying in schools,
offices and allcourtrooms.

They claim that any place flying a gold-fringed U.S. flag is showing that it's
under Federal territorial law (instead of the laws of the state it's inside
of). Other "Patriot" groups claim that the gold-fringed flag means
Martial Law, while still others claim it means Maritime or Admiralty Law.
You'd hope their stories would at least agree with each other. It is true
that, in describing the U.S. flag, 4 USC 1-2 make no mention of any fringe
decorations being allowed on the flag, although they don't say that a colored
fringe isn't allowed; and it's true that Executive Order No. 10834
(August 21, 1959, 24 F.R. 6865) allows a yellow fringe to be added by
the President to indicate military jurisdiction; but a more likely explanation
for the gold fringe on courtroom flags is that it just makes them look more
formal and impressive. At least one U.S. District Court case,
McCann v.
Greenway, 952 F.Supp. 647 (W.D.Mo. 1997), supports this latter
notion. McDonald and Modeleski, of course, imply that the ubiquitous use
of the gold fringed flag is evidence that the secret, dark purpose of the Buck
Act has been achieved.

In lines 99-109, McDonald and Modeleski give instructions on how you
can avoid being caught up in this Terrible Federal Area Trap. Not
only, they claim, can you not have a Social Security Number or a Federal
bank account, you also cannot have a State resident driver's license
or a car registered in your name with the State's DMV. Whoa!
Hold on there. A state driver's livence? The state
DMV? I thought you only said that receiving a Federal benefit,
or having some kind of Federal I.D. tag, puts you under direct Federal
jurisdiction! Well, that just goes to show what a naive and trusting
soul you are. The State governments are secretly in cahoots with
the Federal government. When you register a motor vehicle with the
DMV, a secret computer code is sent to their couriers in the Black Helicopters,
who whisk it away to the state's Corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois,
who are in direct communication with the Board of De-Sovereignization in
Washington, D.C. — an organization so secret the government denies that
it even exists — who gives you a Federal I.D. code without your even
knowing you have one!

A more straightforward possibility, that the Federal government is
Constitutionally allowed to tax State residents and that not having any of
these forms of identification merely makes it impossible for the government to
prove you're a resident when your case goes to court, just doesn't have
that nice Conspiratorial ring to it.

If you're standing on base, they can't touch you

Lines 109-111 fallaciously assert that Congress has no power whatsoever
outside of Federally-owned territory:

Remember, all acts of Congressare territorial in nature and only apply within the
territorialjurisdiction of Congress.

Like the claim that Congress cannot tax state Citizens, the Constitution
says otherwise. Article I, section 8 enumerates the many powers of
Congress: they get to tax, borrow money, regulate all interstate and international
commerce, make bankruptcy and naturalization laws, coin money, punish counterfeiters,
build post offices, give patents and copyrights, constitute Tribunals inferior
to the Supreme Court, punish international crimes, declare war, raise armies,
provide a navy, regulate the military, call forth the militia9,
run the militia, have exclusive legislation over D.C. and Federally owned
land (those dreaded "Federal Areas" again), and make any laws necessary
to enforce the Constitution. Article I, section 10 says what State
governments are not allowed to do, implying that any powers restricted
therefrom are also within the purview of Congress. Several of the
27 Amendments also assert that "Congress shall have the power to enforce
this amendment by appropriate legislation".

But, of course, we can't just take the Constitution's word on it: in
lines 111-115, McDonald and Modeleski list three Supreme Court cases
alleged to show that Congress can't legislate anything that happens outside
of Federal territories.

In the first case, American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S.
347, the United Fruit Company (a New Jersey corporation) had persuaded
the government of Costa Rica to invade Panama in 1904 and interfere with
a plantation and a railroad belonging to the American Banana Company.
The American Banana Co. claimed that the United Fruit Co. did this in an
attempt to eradicate its competition and fix banana prices, in violation
of the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court ruled that since Costa Rica
was a "sovereign power", U.S. laws didn't apply to it; so long as United
Fruit Co. didn't break any international U.S. treaties, it cannot be held
liable for Costa Rica's actions in a U.S. court. The sovereignty-minded
patriots, of course, would argue that State Citizens are sovereign
powers unto themselves, and since this case establishes that U.S. laws
don't apply to foreign ("sovereign") countries, Federal laws shouldn't
apply to State Citizens either. But a case dealing with foreignnations can hardly serve as a precedent for single human beings,
even if such a thing as personal sovereignty does exist. The justices
also said, "All legislation is prima facie territorial," which to someone
not particularly fond of the Federal government could be construed
as meaning that only in U.S. territories (not states) does the Federal
government have any jurisdiction at all. Once again, Article I section
8 of the Constitution says otherwise.

The second case, U.S. v. Spelar, 338 U.S. 217, features a U.S. airline
flight engineer (Mark Spelar) who died in a take-off crash from an airbase
in England. The airbase was owned by England but leased to the U.S..
Spelar's estate sued the U.S. government for negligent operation of the
airbase, using England's wrongful death statute. The suit was thrown
out in that the airbase was owned by a "foreign country"; Spelar's estate
appealed, and the appellate court reversed the decision. The U.S.
appealed the appeal, taking the case to the Supreme Court, who reversed
the reverse of the decision. The word "sovereignty" appears 3 or
4 times in the judicial opinions, but once again, it is referring to countries,
not people.

The third case, New York Central R.R. Co. v. Chisholm, 268 U.S. 29,
featured a U.S. citizen employed by New York Central Railroad Company.
He was on one of their trains when, 30 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border,
he was fatally injured. His estate recovered $3000 in damages from
the railroad company under the Liability Act (a U.S. law). The railroad
company appealed the case to the Supreme Court, claiming that since the
Liability Act said nothing about its applicability outside the U.S., it
had no jurisdiction in Canada. The judges agree with the railroad
company, quoting an earlier case, Sandberg v. McDonald, 248 U.S. 185, in
which their own court had said "Legislation is presumptively territorial
and confined to limits over which the law-making power has jurisdiction."
They also quote American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., mentioned above.
While it is true that Congress only has exclusive jurisdiction over
Federally-owned land, this doesn't mean it has no jurisdiction over
land belonging to any of the states.

To this list of 3 supreme court cases, I would like to add a Federal
Circuit court case, United States v. Mundt, 29 F.3d 233, 237 (6th Cir.
1994), which states:

"On the merits, defendant argues that the District Court lacked
jurisdiction over him because he is solely a resident of the state of
Michigan and not a resident of any 'federal zone' and is therefore not
subject to federal income tax laws. This argument is completely
without merit and patently frivolous."

States within States

Lines 116-119 claim that "a fictitious Federal state within a state" has been
created, either through the Buck Act or through some other means. They
refer the reader to a Federal Supreme Court case and a Pennsylvania Supreme
Court case which, one would hope, support their argument. I was able to
look up the first, Howard v. Sinking Fund of Louisville, 344 U.S. 624, with
FindLaw's web-based search engine. To my amazement, this case actually
makes extensive reference to . . . get ready for a shock here
. . . the Buck Act! Yes! Finally! The first
court case cited in the whole article which hinges upon what the article
is supposed to be about!

The case itself concerns a Naval Ordnance Plant within the State of
Kentucky, which had been acquired by the Federal government and thus was
under the Federal government's exclusive jurisdiction. (At last!)
The city of Louisville, Kentucky, decided to increase its city limits to
completely encompass this Federal land, and then imposed a tax on the ordnance
plant's employees equal to 1% of the income they earned within the city
limits. Even though this tax was not considered an income tax under
Kentucky law (it was officially a "license fee" levied on "the privilege"
of engaging in certain activities), it could be construed to fall under
the definition of an income tax given in section 106 of the Buck Act.
The ordnance plant employees sued the city, claiming it had no right to
annex the plant since it had been ceded to the Federal government before
it was part of Louisville. The Supreme Court said that, since Louisville
was extending its municipal borders according to Kentucky law, and that
all state income taxes were valid on a Federal Area located within
the state's borders thanks to the Buck Act, all municipal taxes
of that state were valid also.

The line from the judicial opinions that doubtlessly got McDonald's
and Modeleski's attention was the following: "The fiction of a state within
a state can have no validity to prevent the state from exercising its power
over the federal area within its boundaries, so long as there is no interference
with the jurisdiction asserted by the Federal Government." The fictitious
"state within a state" referred to by this court opinion was, of course,
the Federally-owned naval ordnance plant lying within the Commonwealth
of Kentucky, in which the Federal government (not Kentucky) had ultimate
jurisdiction. For the convenience of this court case, the justices
referred to such land as a fictitious Federal state within a State.
In that sense, and considering that the Buck Act includes U.S. territories
in its definition of "State" for some reason, yes, you could consider any
wholly-owned Federal land to be "a fictitious Federal state within a state."

The second case they cite, Schwartz v. O'Hara TP. School Dist., 100
A. 2d. 621, 625, 375 Pa. 440, dates from 1953 and thus is too old to be
around in any databases. I had to go to the "really old copies of
the Atlantic Reporter second-series" section of the law library to look
it up. In this case, in 1923 the Pennsylvania legislature ceded some
147 acres of land within the physical boundaries of O'Hara Township to
the Federal government for a Veteran's Administration hospital. This
hospital had some permanent residents in it who had school-age kids.
The O'Hara Township School District refused to pay these kids' public-school
tuition because they weren't living "in" the city. The plaintiff
argued that, since the Buck Act (aha!) permitted Pennsylvania and any of
its subdivisions to levy sales and income taxes on residents of the V.A.
hospital, it should therefore "force" the state and local governments to
give these Federal-Area residents all the perks they would otherwise have
if they weren't living in Federal Areas. Never mind the fact that
O'Hair Township levied no such taxes to begin with. The judges basically
said, "Oh no it doesn't," and the parents in the V.A. hospital had to keep
paying for their kids' tuition.

About four-fifths of the way through the Judicial Opinions in Schwartz
v. O'Hara Tp. School District, they mention that the plaintiff cited Howard
v. Sinking Fund of Louisville (the same case related above) "concerning
the limited valitidy of the 'fiction of a state within a state'."
The Pennsylvania judges reply that the concept of a "state within a state"
was a perfectly decent way to describe exclusive Federal jurisdiction over
ceded areas. So, yes, I suppose you could say that fictitious
Federal states within states exist, if only as a legal convenience.

Lines 119-120 ask the reader to compare parts 51.2 and 52.2 of Title 31 of the
Code of Federal Regulations. The search engine at
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr
claims that Title 31 of the C.F.R. contains parts numbered 1 through 19,
and that the next part is part 100. It's pretty typical for each
CFR title to reserve blocks of 100 part numbers for related regulations,
and then not use all of them. I can't find out if there really is
(or ever was) a part 51 or part 52 of 31 CFR. I'll give Rich
and Mitch the benefit of the doubt here and assume that, if it exists,
it also describes Federally-owned territory as a kind of "state within
a state".

Going Postal

But that's not what McDonald and Modeleski mean. Lines 121-126 claim:

This fictional "State" is identified by the useof two-letter abbreviations like
"CA", "AZ" and "TX", asdistinguished from the authorized abbreviations like
"Calif.","Ariz." and "Tex.", etc. This fictional
State also uses ZIPcodes which are within the municipal,
exclusive legislativejurisdiction of Congress.

So, they claim, this fictitious "Federal state" covers more than just Federal
land. If your home address uses a two-letter abbreviation for its
state, or a ZIP code, you've just placed yourself inside a dreaded "Federal
Area", making you subject to taxation by the "State" in which the Federal
Area resides, which "State" can include the District of Columbia, which
has been extended to cover the entire continental U.S. because of the Social
Security Act.

And that's why you have to pay Federal Income Tax.

(This is quite a remarkable claim, considering that neither two-letter
state abbreviations, nor ZIP codes, were around at the time the Buck Act
was passed. It's even more remarkable when you consider that, since
1971, the post office hasn't been a part of the Federal government; it's
now a separate nonprofit organization in its own right which just happens
to be under special Federal protection for things like mailboxes.
The Buck Act article is not at all clear on why addresses with 2-letter
state names or ZIP codes fall within a "fictitious Federal State".
Perhaps the Evil Federal Government applied the same sneaky "plastic overlay"
strategy to all those Zoning Improvement Plan [ZIP] codes created in 1963
that it previously did to the Social Security Act. Perhaps those
bar codes at the bottom of your mail tell the government how many unregistered
guns you own, too.10)

This mailing code warning occurs in other Sovereignty-oriented literature
as well. This isn't surprising, since, like Social Security numbers,
special government-concocted codes have the flavor of that darned Mark
of the Beast. But, of course, each different Sovereignty document
claims a different thing you have to do to your mailing address if you
want to get out from under the Evil Federal Government's thumb. For
example, suppose the mailing address you've been using up until now is
as follows:

Myron J. Citizen
123 My Street
Los Angeles, CA 90079-5432

and you decide to become a Sovereign National and Throw Off The Yoke Of
Federal Oppression. One patriot I've spoken with told me to spell
that address as:

claiming that the square brackets magically turn a ZIP code (but not
a ZIP+4 code) into a non-ZIP postal zone immune from the dread implications
of the Buck Act. Mitch Modeleski4, in
the back of his book The Federal Zone14,
used to put the city-state-zone portion of his address in this format:

where DMM stands for Domestic Mail Manual, the manual containing the Services
Regulations for the U.S. Postal Service. I've also seen this ZIP
code exemption regulation referred to as UMM 122.20. Others claim
you must use the last two digits of the ZIP code (not the ZIP+4 code) after
the name of the city, followed by the full, underlined name of the state:

Los Angeles 79, CaliforniaZIP EXEMPT

because "Los Angeles 79" is the "Postal Zone" name which, despite being
a U.S. Postal Service invention, still magically removes you from Federal
jurisdiction somehow. Yet others claim that you can still put the
full ZIP+4 code in your address, but it has to be on a separate line in
this format:

Postal Zone 90079-5432/TDC

where TDC stands for Threat, Duress, and Coercion (the implication being,
in the words of Karl Kleinpaste, that "the consequence of leaving off postal
district numbers is that mail moves more slowly, penalizing me for not
volunteering into the jurisdiction"). But still other sovereignty-minded
patriots claim that none of this is enough, that if you so much as receive
mail from the mailbox in front of your home, you are receiving a "benefit"
from the Federal government and are thus under direct Federal jurisdiction.
For them, the only solution is to forego your street address entirely,
and use the somewhat antequated system of the general delivery address:

Myron J. Citizen
General Delivery
Los Angeles 79, Calif.

Perhaps you have to say "non-domestic mail" or "united States of America"
somewhere in there, too. In any event, so say the Sovereign Citizens, if
you don't follow their formula precisely, right down to the proper direction of
the ink stroke, the Federal government will ensnare you in its Federal Area
trap.

Why so much attention to detail? Why this feeling that you're walking on
a tightrope, that one misstep throws you into the jaws of doom? Perhaps
it is because some Patriots have tried other methods in the past, and
failed. The Feds got 'em. How could they do this? How
could the Feds possibly win their case, when obviously the laws and the
courts all say that you don't have to pay income tax if you don't have a social
security number or use a postal code? It couldn't possibly
be because our arguments are wrong, could it? No, there must
be some legal mis-step that the other person took which led to his
downfall. If we refine our mailing address, maybe quote some more
Federal regulations (or maybe not quote any Federal regulations,
since maybe the mere act of quoting them puts us under their jurisdiction!),
then we'll be immune to anything They can throw at us. We might have
to give up receiving mail at our house, but dog gone it, that's the Price
We Pay to Be Free.

I submit, once again, that what not claiming a "normal" address for
your mail does is makes it more difficult for the government to prove you're
a resident within any of the United States, should you contest this claim
in court. In the extreme case of using a General Delivery address,
it makes it impossible to prove residency in a court. Revocation
of your Social Security number, and perhaps of your voter registration
(under the belief that the "U.S. Citizenship" requirements on the ballot
mean "Citizen under the direct and total jurisdiction of the Federal government",
of course), also makes it impossible to prove in court that you are a U.S.
citizen (or for that matter, one of those "State Citizens" you hear the
patriot sovereign guys cheering about). And if they can't prove you're
a citizen in the U.S. or a resident in the U.S., you get
to be a Non-Resident Alien, which only has to pay Income Taxes on income
from "sources within the United States". And if your income source
successfully refutes his U.S. citizenship and residency, they can't
prove that he's a source within the U.S., either. And you both end
up getting away with being tax-free.

Another way to "include" yourself out?

Line 128 contains what I am sure is a misprint; they refer to the Buck Act as
"4 U.S.C.S. Secs. 105-113" but they probably meant "Secs. 105-110".
4 USC sections 105-110 comprise the Buck
Act. 4 USC section 111 is the Public
Salary Tax Act of 1939. 4 USC sections 112 and 113 have nothing to
do with Federal Areas. Section 112 allows two or more "states" (which
again includes the District of Columbia) to enter into agreements with
each other for the purposes of fighting crime. This law is necessary
since Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution prohibits states from entering
"into any Agreement or Compact with another State" without the consent
of Congress. Section 113 does borrow the definition of "income
tax" from section 110(c) of the Buck Act, though; it prevents states (including
D.C.) from levying an income tax on any Member of Congress that doesn't
actually represent that state, even if said congressperson has a residence
in that state so that (s)he can attend Congress. You can see why
Congress would want to pass such a law. However, it has no effect
on noncongresspersons.12

Starting in line 133, the article takes an unexpected twist. Now,
we already "know" from lines 103-104 that state drivers licenses and state
vehicle registrations with your name on them somehow put you in a Federal
Area, right? Yet, here, in lines 133-138, we are told:

In California,this is established by California Form 590, Revenue and Taxation.All you have to do is to state that you live in California.
Thisestablishes that you do not live in a "Federal area" and that youare exempt from the Public Salary Tax Act of 1939 and
also fromthe California Income Tax for residents who live "in this State".

So, McDonald and Modeleski claim, using California Tax Form 590 and saying
that you "live in California" puts you outside a Federal Area.
And furthermore, using this Magic Silver Bullet of a tax form also exempts
California residents from California Income Tax!

Wow! Wouldn't that be great? A copy of California Form 590, called
a "Withholding Exemption Certificate", is available at
http://www.1040.com/forms/state/ca/97/97_590.pdf or
http://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/97_forms/97_590.pdf. According to its
instructions, this form is supposed to be used to exempt a California resident
from withholding of California State income taxes by a Withholding
Agent. California income taxes are required to be withheld from all
California source income paid to non-California residents; the person or
organization doing the withholding is called the Withholding Agent. You
would give this form to your withholding agent if you were receiving California
source income and were a California resident, to tell him to stop
withholding. (However, it doesn't get you out of having California income
tax withheld from a regular employee paycheck.) So in order to use this
form at all, you would first need to find somebody other than your employer who
qualified as a Withholding Agent, and then you would give this form to
him — not to the California or Federal government.
You might just as well write "I live in California" on the back of a used
envelope, and hide it in your basement.

But let's give McDonald and Modeleski the benefit of the doubt on this
one. Whether you use California Form 590 or some other method, you
can still proclaim to the world, "I live in California", and sign it under
penalty of perjury if you so wish. (I assume you'd want to substitute
the state you actually live in if you don't happen to live in California.
Maybe the Alabama Franchise Tax Board has a form 590, too.) And once
you do so, according to our intrepid author and editor, you need pay neither
Federal nor State income tax ever again.

Why? Because of the way the term "includes" is supposed to be interpreted
by the courts, of course!5 Lines 139-146
bring up the point that most states have laws that define what the term "in
this State" means, as used in other parts of that state's laws (including its
tax laws). This definition appears, according to lines 144-146 of the
article, as:

"In this State" or "in the State" means within the exteriorlimits of the State ... and includes all territories withinsuch limits owned or ceded to the United States of America.

Notice the little word "includes" in the middle there. Modeleski
and others have cited a Treasury Decision and court case(s) in which the
term "includes", unless it's followed by a phrase like "but is not limited
to", implicitly excludes everything not following it. So,
they would argue, if the term "state" includes lands ceded by the
state to the Federal government, by golly, it obviously excludes
all the land not ceded to the Federal government; and since State
income taxes only apply to persons living or earning money "in this State",
you don't owe State income taxes if you live or work outside Federally-owned
land. Q.E.D..

(Oh, and did I mention, the Internal Revenue Code13
has a similar definition for the term "within the United States"?
So now we have at least two reasons why, assuming you haven't been
drawn into one of those "Federal Areas" by having a Social Security Number
or a street address, you obviously don't owe any Federal income taxes.)

It's a lovely, prizewinning argument. But try using it to convince
a judge or jury. No court case haggling over the definition of "includes"
in either the Buck Act or any state's definition of "In this State" has
ever come to light. If anyone out there knows of one, I'd love to
see it.

Conclusion

The notion that you have more freedoms than you are using is a very attractive
one. As recently as May 1997, I was willing and eager to burn my Social
Security card and become a "Sovereign Citizen". No taxes! Freedom
by the bucketfull! Untouchable by any government! All I needed to
find out was the precise steps as to how to do so. But the further
I probed, the more I realized that there was no "one right way" to do it,
despite the fact that everyone who had done so (and hadn't been incarcerated
yet, I suppose) had done it a different way and insisted that their way
was the only way. And, worse, stories of "failures", of people who had
attempted to "go Sovereign" and had ended up on the wrong end of the Federal
thumbscrews, started to pop up alongside the "miraculous success stories" that
had drawn me to the sovereignty movement(s) to begin with. Not that many
"patriot" pages were willing to advertise these failures. Why had these
attempts failed? Because they were following somebody else's "one
right way" of doing it, of course. The American version of "Sovereignty"
was like a religion with hundreds of different denominations, each with its own
different answers and each assured of its own infallibility.

Most of the denominations of this American Sovereignty religion share at least
a few of the same sacred documents. Mitch Modeleski's The Federal
Zone14 is linked to several "patriot" web
pages, although both the older links to http://www.levity.com and the newer
links to http://www.deoxy.org are no longer active. Irwin Schiff's books
How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes, and The Federal Mafia
(which he wrote while in jail for tax-related crimes), receive several
mentions, and are available for sale from a few sites. George Gordon, who
also went to jail for something-or-other, has some writings available on
"sovereignty" web pages, and a book titled The Common Law (not to be
confused with the book of the same name by former Supreme Court justice Oliver
Wendall Holmes). Complete 400-page transcripts of
U.S. vs. Lloyd R.
Long, a Tennessee case in which Long is charged with willful failure to
file tax returns and is found Not Guilty because his Patriot arguments and poor
responses from the IRS convinced him that he wasn't liable for any income tax
(so his failure to file wasn't willful), are available in at least two
places. And, of course, there is "The Story of
the Buck Act", originated by McDonald and edited by Modeleski.

When I first read "The Story of the Buck Act", I
was a True Believer of this new (to me) Religion of American Sovereignty.
But soon, holes started appearing in their arguments. The postal zone and
state driver's license admonitions seemed to come out of nowhere. I
looked up the text of 4 USC 110, and there at the top were the words "As used
in sections 105-109 of this title" qualifying each and every definition
contained therein — including the definition of "Federal Area" so crucial
to their Buck Act argument. If there were problems with some of their
assertions, were there also problems with others? Line 156 of their own
article gave me the answer. It began:

So, do some research.

I'm glad I did.

Incidentally, much more recently (16-September-1999), my limited ongoing
research brought two more Federal court cases to my attention: Johnson v.
IRS (CD Cal 1994) 888 F.Supp 1495, which is a Federal district court case;
and US v. Kolchev (9th Cir unpub 4/5/94) 21 F3d 1117(t), 73 AFTR2d 1817,
which is a Federal Circuit court case. Johnson and Kolchev both
invoked the Buck Act as part of their fusillade of Sovereign Citizen
arguments. And in both cases, the judicial opinion was that the
Buck Act only does what it says it does (allows states to apply their
income/sales taxes on Federally owned land within their physical borders).

Footnotes:

1. An obscure conspiracy theory making its way around
"sovereignty" circles is that the U.S. Treasury Department went bankrupt
in 1933 and had all its assets transferred to the Federal Reserve, or the
International Banking Conspiracy, or the Bavarian Illuminati, or whomever.
This theory appeared in, among other places, a formerly-electronic book
called The Federal Zone14 by Mitch
Modeleski4, in which he claimed to have evidence
for it but failed to disclose any of this evidence. Under this theory,
the new organization created a fake front called "The Department of the
Treasury" (or sometimes it's "The Treasury Department" without a "U.S."
in front of it), whose name sounds like the real U.S. Treasury Department
to those dupes out there who don't know the "real" story. And it's this
privately owned Treasury Department that uses the IRS to collect your money.
To this assertion, I must reply: Then why does it say "United States Treasury"
at the top of my IRS refund checks?

2. Yes, yes, I know, there's no Internal Revenue
Code13 saying that you have to file a "form
1040". There are, however, Internal Revenue Codes saying that you
have to file a "return" if you have more than a certain (small) amount of gross
income (IRC 6012), and that you must sign it under penalty of perjury (IRC
6065). You could write it on a piece of toilet paper with a pink crayon,
but you still have to file a return. Form 1040 is a tax-return template;
it's provided by the IRS as a "courtesy" to assist you in filing a return that
meets all Internal Revenue Code requirements for information disclosure and tax
calculation. Of course, it's not exactly chock-full of hints as to how to
reduce your taxes, but that's your job, not the tax collector's.

3. The United States Code, also known as the United States
Consolidated Statutes, is an enormous document. It contains just about
every law passed by Congress. There are over 50 "Titles" in the Code,
each one of which may have thousands of "Sections", each one of which may be
several pages long. The search engine at
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/, which contains the entire Code, limits
your searches to a single Title; that's how big the Code is. A specific
statute within the Code is usually abbreviated as "Title USC
Section(subsection)"; so Title 4, Section 110, subsection e would
be abbreviated as "4 USC 110(e)". You'd better get used to it.
McDonald and Modeleski cite the U.S. Code a lot in their article.

4. A website calling itself the
Supreme Law Firm claims that Mitch
Modeleski is a pen name for Paul Andrew Mitchell. Not surprisingly, this
is Paul Mitchell's website. Interstingly, this website has a copy of
The Story of
the Buck Act that claims to be written by Richard McDonald and edited by
"Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S." (In earlier years, the "edited by"
credit on this page was given to a "John E. Trumane." Perhaps John E.
Trumane was another pen name for Paul Andrew Mitchell.)

5. In Mitch Modeleski's4 book
The Federal
Zone14, Modeleski spends and entire
chapter on the legal definition of the word "includes". If the
word "includes" occurs in a statute before a list of things, are things that
are not on that list automatically excluded from it?
Obviously, a phrasing such as "includes only" or "means and includes" means
that other things are excluded, while "includes but is not limited to" means
that other things are not necessarily excluded; but what if "includes" occurs
by itself? While someone who's been around the courts a while might
answer, "It depends on the context", Modeleski is not so easily
satisfied. He cites Treasury Decision 3980, part of which says that
"includes" with no modifiers should be construed to exclude everything not
following it. Additionally, a Usenet acquaintance of mine referred me to
Powers exrel. Dovon v. Charron R.I., 135 A. 2nd 829-832 (a state court case),
in which the judge's opinion states: "Where a general term in Statute is
followed by the word 'including,' the primary import of specific words
following quoted words is to indicate restriction rather than
enlargements." [Note that United States v. Condo, 741 F.2d 238, 239 (9th
Cir.1984), cert denied, 469 U.S. 1164 (1985) directly contradicts this.]
Since no court case has ever come to light where this interpretation of
"includes" is used on the Buck Act, it's still a nebulous sticking point.
My guess is that the original intent of the law, as appears in Congressional
transcripts, would decide whether or not "the term 'state' includes D.C."
should be interpreted to mean "the term 'state' includes what is normally
meant by 'state', plus D.C." or as the more questionable "the term 'state'
includes only D.C.".

6. There is some controversy over whether the 16th amendment
was properly ratified. The official record is that 38 of the 48 states
— two more than the 3/4 majority required — voted to ratify the
amendment in 1913. Only 4 of these states, however, voted to ratify the
exact wording of the proposed amendment; the other 34 ratified versions
with tiny punctuation or capitalization errors; so, a Sovereign Citizen
"Patriot" might argue, it was never properly ratified and nobody has to pay
income tax. This ignores the fact that many previous amendments,
including the Second Amendment which is sacred to so many "Patriots", were
previously ratified with different spellings and/or punctuations by the states
— some deviations being far worse than the ones in the states' versions
of the 16th Amendment texts. Another argument was that the actual number
of states that voted to ratify any spelling of the proposed 16th
Amendment was smaller than the 38 reported by Secretary of State Philander C.
Knox in 1913. Georgia, they claim, actually voted "no". Minnesota
informed the Secretary of State as to its "yes" vote orally, rather than in
writing, which doesn't carry the signature authority of the Governor and thus
"obviously" doesn't count. And one of these 38 states was Ohio; at the
time Ohio was admitted to the Union its state legislature forgot to formally
vote to let Ohio become a U.S. state (this error wasn't noticed and corrected
until 1953). So, therefore, the income tax opponents argue, Ohio's vote
didn't count either. And thus, subtracting Georgia, Minnesota, and the
"non-state" of Ohio from the reported figure of 38 "yes" votes, only 35 out of
the 47 states — one less than the 3/4 majority required — voted to
ratify the 16th amendment. The problem with the Ohio argument is that the
admission process for states in the early 19th century was a lot less formal
than it is now, and it's obvious that both the people and the government of
Ohio wanted to be and liked being and thought of
themselves as being a state throughout the 1800s. There's an even
larger list of "reasons" why any state's "yes" vote should be counted as a "no"
vote at
http://www.constitution.org/ica_ltnw.htm.
However, even in the highly unlikely event that the 16th Amendment
wasn't properly ratified, that still wouldn't make modern Federal
income taxes unconstitutional. In 1916, the Supreme Court decided
(in Brushaber v. Union Pacific, 240 U.S. 1) that the sixteenth amendment
really didn't change the Constitution at all; it merely clarified
that an income tax should not be considered a direct tax regardless of
the source of the income. (Income derived from property rental had
been deemed a property tax [and thus a direct tax] in the 1894 Supreme
Court case "Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429".)
See also Daniel B. Evans' Tax
Protestor FAQ.

7. In 1939, Title VIII of the Social Security Act was moved
into Internal Revenue Code (26 USC)13 sections
1400-1425. In 1954, it was moved again into Internal Revenue Code
sections 3101-3126, forming a chapter entitled "Federal Insurance Contributions
Act". The current Social Security tax rates are higher than they were in
the 1935 Act.

8. The 14th Amendment is another popular target of southern
Patriots. It was ratified by the southern states under the duress of a
Federal garrison; the Federal government's decree at the time was "we won't
take this garrison out of your state until you ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th
amendments". By stating that "No state shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States", instead of Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1's less strongly-worded
"The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities
of Citizens in the several States", the 14th Amendment eroded the old
dogma of States' Rights. Patriots also like to point out how "citizen" in
the 14th Amendment is no longer capitalized, even though it was capitalized as
late as the 11th Amendment (which had abandoned the earlier convention of
capitalizing all nouns). Of course, since States' Rights were the
immediate cause of the Civil War, most northerners weren't too hot on the idea
any more anyway.

9. 10 USC 311 defines the "Organized Militia" as the
U.S. military and various National Guards, and the "Unorganized Militia"
as all able-bodied male citizens age 17-44 who aren't in the Organized
Militia. Both Militias can be called forth, organized, armed, and
disciplined by Congress, per Aricle I, section 8, clauses 15 and 16 of
the Constitution. If you are a male U.S. citizen who's at least 17
and less than 45, and are physically able to carry a gun, you're in
the Militia, whether you want to be or not. It should be noted, though,
that since the term "unorganized militia" first appeared in Federal law
in 1903, they have never been called into actual service. See
The New Militia FAQ Part Three
for a non-"patriot"'s history of militias in the states.

10. Thanks to Jim Ellwanger for this one. (Note to
Patriot readers: Jim was not being serious.)

11. Note that Mitch4 spells
"united States" with a lower-case "u". This is because the Federal
government calls itself the "United States" with a capital "U", and he
sure as heck doesn't want anybody to assume he's part of them.
I've also seen it spelled "united states", with both a lower-case "u" and
"s", because some other Sovereignty-minded citizen claimed that State (with
a capital "S") refers to a mysterious unconstitutional incorporated government
entity that secretly controls each otherwise-free-and-sovereign lower-case-"s"
state. Perhaps this is the same secret government that sends your
State DMV registration to the top-secret Federal Board of De-Sovereignization.

12. I just know some tax protestor out there is going to
figure out an excuse to call every U.S. citizen a "Member of Congress" so that
we can be exempt from state income taxes — including taxes from the
"state" of D.C., which as every good Patriot knows is synonymous with the
entire Federal Government (right?), thus exempting you from Federal income
taxes as well.

13. The term "Internal Revenue Code" is a synonym for Title 26
of the U.S. Code. One of the many Sovereignty-oriented Patriot claims as
to Why We Don't Owe Income Tax is that the entire corpus of the Internal
Revenue Code (all of 26 USC) was never actually voted into law by
Congress. Modeleski's The Federal
Zone14 cites a Preface to the 1982 edition of
the U.S. Code, in which the Speaker of the House states: "Titles 1, 3,
. . . 23, 28, . . . have been revised, codified, and
enacted into positive law and the text thereof is legal evidence of the laws
therein contained. The matter contained in the other titles of the Code
is prima facie evidence of the laws." Since the preface to this
particular edition of the Code doesn't explicitly mention Title 26, Modeleski
claims, Title 26 was never voted into positive law. By this logic, Titles
2, 24, 25, and 27 must never have been voted into law either. According
to Daniel B. Evans'
Tax Protestor FAQ, what
this actually means is that Congress never voted to call the laws
"Title 26" or "Title 2" or anything of that sort. Congress called some
Federal tax laws "Public Law 99-514", for example, the "99-514" meaning that
they were combined in the 514th bill to be passed by the 99th Congress and
signed by the President. The U.S. Code contains the texts of many Federal
laws with similarly obscure names, re-numbered for easier reference. To
be officially called "26 USC", these same tax laws would have to be
"re-enacted by codification", i.e. passed as another bill explicitly calling
them 26 USC 1, 26 USC 2, etc., which has not yet happened. (Note that the
Buck Act was re-enacted by codification when it became 4 USC 105-110;
the original Buck Act bill passed by Congress was "54 Stat. 1059".) So,
even though Congress has never passed a law that called itself "26 USC 1", the
text of 26 USC 1 has been passed as a law, as have all the other
sections of the Internal Revenue Code.

14. Mitch Modeleski's book The Federal Zone used to be
available in electronic form at
http://www.deoxy.org/fz/.
Modeleski (a.k.a. Paul Andrew Mitchell) since decided that this was an
"unauthorized copy" of his work and constitutes a copyright violation. As
of the end of June 1998, he hads sent out several threatening e-mail messages,
not only to deoxy.org but also to the owners and ISPs of any web pages that
contain so much as a link to the offending web pages, claiming that his
Supreme Law Firm4 was going to prosecute them for
fraud if they don't cough up written permission from Paul himself to display
those links within 10 days. Although an unauthorized reproduction of a
work does constitute a copyright violation, I've never heard of a weblink
to an unauthorized reproduction constituting a copyright violation in
and of itself. However, the on-line version of The Federal Zone
which used to be at www.deoxy.org has been removed from that site, so I can
assume that deoxy.org took Paul Mitchell's threats seriously. Update
19-April-2002: In an ironic twist, Paul Andrew Mitchell is now making
The Federal Zone freely available electronically on his own
website, at
http://www.supremelaw.org/fedzone11/index.htm. Update
27-January-2003: In another ironic twist, the place where www.deoxy.org
used to have an online copy of The Federal Zone, they now have a page
containing other "sovereign citizen"/"Patriot" arguments and 4 links to pages
debunking The Federal Zone (including this webpage). As of this
date, Paul Andrew Mitchell has also failed to carry through with his threat
to prosecute for Copyright violations, although he did at one point send out
e-mail offering "Copyright amnesty" to people who formerly had links to the
"unauthorized" online copy of The Federal Zone, if (A) said people paid
the full price for a printed copy of The Federal Zone, and (B) Paul
Andrew Mitchell was feeling in a nice mood.

Legal-looking disclaimer: This article is presented "as-is" and
is not to be considered legal or tax advice of any kind. In particular,
I would really not recommend that you actually try submitting your tax return
on toilet paper in pink crayon.

Got a problem with any of this? Think I'm a secret spy for the IRS?
Then contact me at: